And apparently all of them are going online to champion and celebrate the show; Glee may rank 42nd in the Nielsen ratings, but it's a phenomenon on social networking sites such as MySpace.

"We monitored Twitter feeds," said Chris Albrecht, co-editor of NewTeeVee. com, a Web site devoted to online video. " Glee is absolutely crushing the competition. Of all TV shows, it's the one people Twitter about the most."

Fans of the series -- like High School Musical with a wicked sense of humor -- call themselves Gleeks.

They express their devotion by taping do-it-

yourself copycat videos of the show's musical numbers, then posting them on YouTube or on their home pages.

"Right after we aired the pilot in May, people started posting their own versions of our songs online," said Dante Di Loreto, executive producer of Glee.

"It was so exciting to see because we knew then that we had touched a chord.

"Believe me, I've seen a lot of different versions of our songs," Di Loreto said of the online reproductions. "No matter how crazy they get, it's still flattering."

Why do fans upload their videos to the Web?

"A lot of the literature about contemporary youth in my discipline talks about narcissism," said Alexander Riley, associate professor of sociology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.

"This is a generation that is driven in the direction of obsessive concern for self. It's a narcissism with a powerful degree of requiring the approval of others."